Drug reformer Holcomb ‘seriously considering’ challenge to Sawant

The attorney who masterminded Washington’s marijuana legalization campaign is “seriously considering” a 2015 challenge to socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant.

Seattle’s socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant: She may face a high-profile progressive challenger. (AP photo)

Alison Holcomb believes that Sawant is an accomplished agitator, but demonstrates an ideological rigidity that precludes making allies, influencing people and forging coalitions that make change possible.

“How do you get things done? By a lot of hands working together and not pointing fingers at each other,” Holcomb said in an interview.

Holcomb is particularly critical of Sawant for taking an us-vs.-them approach to issues in Seattle’s public life. “Speaking as the wife of a small business owner, I see her approach as, ‘If you are not with us, you are against us. If you are an employer, you don’t care about workers.’ That is simply not true.”

Holcomb, an attorney, is criminal justice director with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. She directed the campaign for Initiative 502, the measure which legalizes, regulates and taxes possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use.

Although sometimes demonized in national politics — George H.W. Bush railed against the ACLU in 1988 — ACLU-Washington has long been a player on issues ranging from juvenile justice to reproductive rights to drug policy reform.

The drug reform group New Approach Washington was unveiled in 2011 at a news conference with Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, travel writer Rick Steves and leaders from the state bar and medical associations.

The campaign won support from Charles Mandigo, former head of the Seattle office of the FBI, as well as two former U.S. attorneys for Western Washington, Republican John McKay and Democrat Kate Pflaumer.

I-502 was notable for penetrating the “Cascade Curtain” — the state’s political divide — by winning not only in Puget Sound population centers, but in Spokane, Whitman, Ferry and Okanogan counties in Eastern Washington. The measure carried by a margin of nearly 400,000 votes.

“One of the differences between council member Sawant and me is that in tackling public issues, I believe in bringing all stakeholders to the table and finding common ground,” said Holcomb.

Holcomb would challenge Sawant next year in the city’s newly created Council District 3, which includes Capitol Hill and First Hill, and runs east to embrace neighborhoods overlooking and along Lake Washington.

Sawant is a former activist in the Occupy Seattle movement and instructor at Seattle Central Community College. Relying on the $15-an-hour minimum wage issue, she narrowly upset four-term Seattle City Councilman Richard Conlin.

She started to raise eyebrows a month after being elected, telling a rally what Boeing machinists should do if their aircraft-building jobs were moved to another state.

“The workers should take over the factory and shut down Boeing’s profit making machine,” Sawant declared. Later, she added: “We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses instead of destructive, you know, war machines.”

She cast the lone vote against confirming Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, after a speech in which Sawant suggested that Seattle police go unarmed at such events as the city’s May Day demonstrations.

Sawant has been a non-stop speaker at demonstrations, from the TransPride parade to a march on the Gates Foundation to events protesting evictions and displacement of low-income workers.

“I would hope council member Sawant would continue her record as an activist,” said Holcomb. “Activists can have difficulty being legislators. I think I would make a better legislator. But she is a very good activist.”